NC: Narrative: Child Acts in the circus influence map.

NC: Influence Map - Father Character

I have made this influence map as it shows gives a rough idea of what the Father will be like. I have looked at films, in particular, where the Father is very commanding and doesn't show much respect for their child/children. As the Father wants his son to be what he wants to be, he needs to be aggressive and "pushy", and this should obviously be shown in his appearance.

NC: Influence Map - Main Character

This is a quick influence map that demonstrates how the main character will act. As the main character is not fully suited to his role as a knife thrower, he is quite clumsy and not too sure about what he is doing. Following on from Alan's suggestion of looking at Jim Dales' character form "Carry On Cowboy", I have looked at similar characters across films and cartoons. Characters like Inspector Gadget and Inspector Closeau, From "The Pink Panther Show", are very careless and get themselves into a lot of tricky situations. Such characteristics can be portrayed in our knife thrower character as he lacks the ability to be perfect at his job, and that is clearly not what his job should be.

NC: Art Style Influence map

Following on from our previous influence map, we'll be drawing on influences such as Limbo, Trine and Skull Girls. Our animation is aiming to have a kind of 2 1/ 2D perspective. Mixing both 3D models with 2D elements to create a kind of puppet show in which to convey our story.

NC: Influence Map: Animation style

After our tutorial with Alan, we started to discuss how our animation could look. As our initial idea was too original/generic, we started to think about more ways as to make our animation unique, especially with regards to the style. We then started to talk about games like Battleblock theater and Limbo, and how we found their styles quite interesting. We then expanded from this and started to look at puppets/puppet animations, which lead us to Punch 'n' Judy and Shadow Puppets. 

We will continue to discuss ideas and will look to have a final idea for both the story and style finalised soon. 

NC: Influence Map: The Circus

This is one of our first influence maps for this project. We want the design our environment, the Circus, to be like the ones we know today. They'll be bright and colourful, just like the ones in the images in this influence map. We can use these images as inspiration when we begin to design it and create thumbnails.